UK Amazon Kindle Forum (UKAKF)

The UK Amazon Kindle Forum is a UK-based Goodreads group for people interested in Amazon's popular eReader, the Kindle. It is moderated by Patti Elliot, Rosemary Oberlander and Simon Turpin and has over 5,000 members.

Discussions are organised into groups, such as Member Introductions, General Chat and Agony Aunt. Most discussions are broken down into topics (threads). One particularly popular thread is their 'Morning!' thread, which is used for ongoing chatter.

Contents

Role in Supporting Self-Published Authors

Authors are invited to start an author thread and add any book offers to existing promotional threads, as and when required. The forum is tightly moderated to avoid spam. However, you should not aim to post promotional materials too often. You will get more from UKAKF if you get involved. UKAKF provides opportunities for authors and readers to network and share ideas.

Ethos

Unlike some groups, UKAKF welcomes author participation across the entire group, not merely within their own author threads. Authors are regarded as full members of the group.

This membership comes at a cost. Authors who post are expected to hang round to respond to their posts, to take part in discussions and to contribute generally.
Whilst promotion is restricted to an author's own thread, there are threads where someone can submit the promo for a book to have it critiqued and changes suggested. In such situations, as part of a discussion it is not unreasonable for someone to post a link to their own promo.
Similarly there have been discussions on 'author biographies' and again, in such a discussion, linking to your own, or even quoting sections, is entirely reasonable.

However flyby posts where you pimp your book in a thread or several threads simultaneously before disappearing into the night without answering questions, are not welcome. If you're lucky the moderators will just remove the promo. If you're unlucky members will find it and note you down and quietly add you to the list of authors they intend never to read.

Meetups

A number of active members of the group met at informal gatherings in Biggleswade. However, there are no official, recurrent events.